You wiped out a full day of production at my small business!

My business is in Fort Collins, CO 80524. Larimer county.

Received an email on Monday 12/15 saying we MIGHT be impacted at noon on Wednesday. Power was shut off at 10am.

Wind didn't start picking up until 3:00 pm! And seemed much worse a week or two ago.

That 5 hour difference was huge! Heck, those 2 hours would even have been helpful!

We lost significant time and revenue! Do you know how embarrassing it is to tell a customer we can't ship when we said we would because the power company simply decided to shut off our power because it's windy? Oh, and dry. We live where it's windy, and dry. Been here 19 years and never had this before, and it's been plenty windy. Yes, unplanned outages, but not this forced shut down ridiculousness.

We manufacture and ship to customers across the US. It's 8 days before Christmas. Essentially, the last day to ship items UPS Ground to arrive before Christmas. That won't happen. Or we'll have to ship expedited. If this happens again Friday(I heard a rumor it might), we're really toast.

Just being told to "plan ahead", with the caveat that "this may or may not affect you" and "we don't know how long the outage will be" isn't helpful. Also, it's not an outage. It's a FORCED Shut down! Will I get any kind of refund...nope...never have...never will. When something unplanned actually happens, I understand. When it's pre-planned, we should be compensated financially. That may force them to take a more targeted approach to who's impacted vs "let's just shut off huge swaths of customers" to "be safe."

I also have a car in the shop that was in the middle of being repaired, but alas, they also were shut down, so now I"m without a car as well.

So, how does this work going forward? What do the winds need to be to require a shut off? Can I just expect this to happen more and more frequently in future? And even more in the summer when it's hotter and drier?

These guys majorly screwed up with Lewisville, so now you're giving them the authority(or at least not preventing them from) just shutting off power whenever there's a "risk" read "liability" that something "might" happen? Fix the underlying problem! Letting them shut down huge chunks of the grid IS NOT the answer. Can't they shut down on a more granular level IF something happens? Also, forcing them to become "green" and make our electric grid even less stable and more expensive also isn't good. If the problem is overhead cables, force them to spend the money to bury cables! Or somehow secure or clear the overhead cables.

You've given them a monopoly now treat them like one! This is simply wrong!